Remember when the telephone was just made for phone calls, the television for watching shows, and the Internet for checking email? Already, these media have been revolutionized, what with photography and music packed into snazzy, slim mobile handsets. The digital lifestyle aims to create a world in which information and entertainment flow to the consumer or business user, where, when, and how they need it. It is a blend of the familiar and the new, using phones, computers and television for new purposes from music and movies, to business networks, to learning. The result: a seamless Web, desktop and mobile experience, for all activities relevant to users and customers in all of its markets. We see the Digital Lifestyle as providing the triple play of services: video, voice and data, from one source.
The end user in the digital lifestyle era will be connected 24/7. Downloading music, movies, and television series from service providers seamlessly over the Internet in a mere few minutes would be possible. Remotely instructing your home system to record your favourite television program using a mobile device will be a breeze. IP telephony will also be more prevalent, as low-cost international calls break down geographical barriers.
Not only are there benefits from the digital lifestyle for individual consumers, there are opportunities for businesses as well. For example, service providers will be tap more revenue opportunities, as the digital lifestyle allows them to reach out to more consumers with the content they want, whenever they want, from anywhere, and from any device. With the digital lifestyle, the mobile professional who has to travel far and often, will find it easier for them to keep up-to-date with all their data, check and respond their e-mail from their mobile device while abroad, and sync files with their PC or laptop when they are back in the office. As such telecom providers will benefit from the increasing average revenue per user (ARPU) through offering a multitude of new services such as downloading songs, movies, ringtones, and the latest news. As demand for such content increases, content providers will be set to earn from each successful download.
Figure 1: Microsoft's Vision of the Digital Lifestyle
The digital lifestyle is fast becoming a reality because of how the existing technologies have been embraced, especially in Asia Pacific. In this region alone, broadband access service market is predicted to reach a subscriber population of 235.84 million by 2011, up from 86.63 million in 2005, with Korea already having the world’s highest broadband penetration of 78 per cent. In countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, much of the population live in high-rise buildings - this means that numerous individuals can easily be wired to broadband access. The advent of the super-fast optical broadband Internet in South Korea and Japan has made the online experience even faster than before. The digital lifestyle is just a natural step forward in that direction, and service providers are beginning to see that the combination of ubiquitous broadband networks, service integration, and software are the winning ingredients to deliver unique highly personalised triple-play services that consumers today demand.
Mobile technology has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years - there were as many as 2 billion mobile subscribers worldwide at the end of 2005, and that figure expected to grow to 3 billion by 2010, encouraging growth for a vision that aims to have its services eventually be accessed from anywhere, anytime.
Mobile Messaging Solutions
People who want to stay connected while on go, such as mobile professionals, are powering demand for smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and media players. Microsoft® Windows Mobile 5.0-based Pocket PCs and smartphones, for example, not only offer an increasingly rich multimedia experience, they also give workers productive when working away from the desktop by enabling fast access to e-mail, Microsoft Office software, instant messaging, and easy synchronisation of contacts and files. Technologies such as the Direct Push Technology in Microsoft Windows Mobile enable businesses to mobilise their employees without having to pay for additional and costly e-mail servers.
Figure 2: Open E-mail Attachments and Respond to E-mails on your Smartphone or Pocket PC
What is also important to enterprises to the ability to deploy enterprise-grade, real-time collaboration capabilities that provide mobile professionals a consistent real-time communications experience across PCs and smart mobile devices; Microsoft's Office Live Communications Server and Communicator Mobile are examples of solutions that are available in the marketplace today.
Mobile Messaging Solutions are just one of the key technologies that are enabling the digital lifestyle to become a reality.
IPTV
IP technology will have a profound impact in the near future, and we expect that telecommunications service providers will eventually deliver all of their services over their IP backbone. We foresee that Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) will be a key technology that plays an integral part in the digital lifestyle. With IPTV, television content is transmitted over the Internet network infrastructure, instead of being delivered through traditional formats and cabling usually used for television. This provides the customer with a greater choice of both regular streaming television, as well as Video on Demand.
IPTV users also will be able to watch and control several live video streams on one screen simultaneously. The IPTV service can be connected to a user's telephone service, so the user can see if a call is coming in and who it is on the TV monitor. IPTV software will eventually open up the TV to a world of services already on the Web, such as shopping, e-mail and instant messaging. IPTV also appears to be far more secure and piracy proof than cable or satellite.
IPTV is already seeing major growth in Asia. According to In-Stat, by 2011, the Asia/Pacific market is set to reach 39 million IPTV subscribers. Earlier this month, SingTel, Asia's leading communications group, announced that it received an IPTV licence from the Media Development Authority in Singapore and will be rolling out trials shortly.
Service Delivery Platforms
We have seen how mobile messaging solutions and IPTV will be integral parts of the digital lifestyle. Now, the name of the game for service providers to meet the demands of the consumer-driven digital lifestyle is service delivery. The key challenge for service providers such as mobile and fixed-line network operators, is to quickly create new services that drive revenue, with minimal disruption to the entire operations, by ensuring efficient service delivery environments. The reality for many service providers now is that their existing networks and back-end systems are a mix of individual applications and services that cannot easily connect with each other or with third-party systems. This makes it difficult and costly to bundle existing services and create new composite services that often take months before it is brought to market.
Enter the solution: Service delivery platforms (SDPs) such as Microsoft’s Connected Services Framework.
SDPs give operators the ability to easily integrate Web services, such as eBay, PayPal, Amazon.com and Windows Live among others, with traditional telecommunications offerings to create innovative, personalized service packages.
Just as media and entertainment companies are the means of distribution of the new lifestyle, SDPs such as Connected Services Framework are integrated server-based software products that enable telecommunications operators to create, aggregate, provision and manage converged communications services for their subscribers, regardless of network or device. They enable existing networks and back-end systems to easily connect with each other or with third-party systems.
When service providers deploy SDPs, they will be able to provide services that embody the digital lifestyle. Companies that own the delivery and last mile networks will have much to gain from the digital lifestyle as it means that their networks will be used more often. They will be able to get the content they want and reach out to the person they seek, whenever they want, from anywhere, and from any device.
An example of how service providers seamlessly integrate all these technologies together using SDPs is shown using the “I’m Lost” mobile service:
You are in Hong Kong, and you are going to meet friends for dinner, but find that you have misplaced directions. Using your mobile phone, you call an “I’m Lost” service to request and receive directions to the restaurant. A network location service establishes your starting point, and through speech recognition, you provide the address of your destination. The “I’m Lost” service invokes a mapping application, generates directions, and sends you an e-mail or voice-mail message containing the directions.
Figure 3: Services Deployed through Service Delivery Platforms
What's to Come
The vision of the digital lifestyle is that the user should be able to gain access to whatever service and information they want across a network wherever they are by whatever network is available and whatever device they choose to use without having to worry about the complexities involved.
So what’s in store for the digital lifestyle? The quadruple-play of technologies – video, voice, data and mobile will be no longer differentiated by the technologies used to access them. We see them evolving into a single play, where no silos exist between services, each device will simply be a window into a world of communication and entertainment. With the current Asian boom in embracing technology, there is no doubt that we will see leaders in the adoption of the digital lifestyle emerging from this region.
Michiel Verhoeven is the General manager for Communications Sector in Asia Pacific, Greater China and Japan, Microsoft.
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